Twisted Mirror
by Most Wicked
Summary: What happens if a young Arm commander meets his own clone... in a machine's body?
1. 1st Chapter

TWISTED MIRROR

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CHAPTER 1

He was sitting in a living room. A big one. He stood up, and walked toward a mirror, to comb his messed-up hair. But what he saw in the mirror..... "Nooooooooooo!!!!!!!!" he yelled.

Everything faded away.

The nightmare has ended, and he started to regain consiousness slowly. It was all a stupid dream. He stood up and looked around, trying to remember where he was.

Oh, that's right! The cloning vats!

They were all around him, pods that contained embryos as well as completed human beings. Chambers such as this were the heart of the ARM Alliance, where great warriors were cloned over and over again. Warriors such as himself.

He himself was extracted from a vat like those around him nearly 30 years ago, and was a complete and perfect clone of a great Arm officer, Brian Maulder. In his time, 120 years ago, Maulder was a great commander, that conquered 5 worlds in rapid succession without backup from other commanders. At the sixth world that he stepped onto, he was overwhelmed by Core tanks too quickly to build significant defenses or army, and after his squad of Pewees and Rockos was history, he started to fight and retreat slowly towards the galactic gate, where reinforcements awaited. He did never make it, but he took out 120 Core units in his frenzy, and another 40 in the final explosion of his death. Later, when the planet was conquered by the Arm, a giant memorial was set up for him on the spot of his death, which was completely lifeless, due to the hazardous radiation that remained there since Brian's explosion.

And he, Maulder148, was an exact copy of that great man, and possesed all his natural skills, as well as education.

There were over 200 clones of that man made. No clone of him, though, has ever succeeded in surpassing the original's skills and achievments, for now. Somehow, Maulder148 always felt somewhat inferior to the naturally born warriors. After all, their genes were completely original and unaltered, their potential capabilities were yet unknown, and they were more... more human!

Cloning technology was almost as bad in the eyes of the rebels, that 4000 years ago escaped to the edge of the galaxy to found the Arm, as patterning. But it was a neccessity. In a war in which a million casualties on average appeared every day that passed, the Arm had to come out with a method to replenish lossess as rapidly as possible.

And that, they did.

The enormous chamber around him, one of 10,000 such chambers on this planet alone, was a quiet testamony to that.

Maulder148 tried to remember why the heck was he sleeping here? Oh yeah, he remembered now! He entered here with a cute girl, formerly a commander on some backwater world far from the front, that was transfered to this planet 2 days ago. When they met, they wanted to get to know each other better, and the cloning vats were the closest desolate place they could find, so they entered and... well... you know.

Anyway, Maulder148 was really glad that nobody entered the chamber while he was asleep. Damn, he could've been caught! He put on his underwear, and exited the chamber, passed through the airlock, which was completely unneccessary because this planet was habitable, and stepped out of the building.

The base was alive with activity. Many people were running here and there, wearing nothing more than their underwear (just like Maulder148). That was no surprise, considering that this planet was Arafon-XQ7, a small and baren wasteland which was mostly covered with desert sands.

Wearing more than your underwear in these conditions was an oughtright suicide. Even with so little in the way of clothing, the feeling was like that of entering a freakin' oven.

Maulder148 felt the horrible wave of heat that washed over him when he exited the cool chambers. The sun rays have hit him in the head like a weightless hammer. He rubbed his head, and looked around.

He spotted a technician passing by, studying something displayed on a datapad in his hand.

Maulder148 stopped him. "Hey hey, hold it, what's the hurry?", Maulder148 asked.

"You weren't briefed 30 minutes ago?", puzzled the young man. But it wasn't his job to rebuke the COMMANDER, so he just continued. "Our Intelligence devision reports a speculated Core assault on this planet in 24 hours."

'So that's the situation', Maulder148 thought. Arafon-XQ7 was small, barren, hot, full in valuable metal deposits and located right in the middle of a vital Arm transport route.

A juicy target. The Core would've taken it a long time ago, if not for Arm command, who recognized the importance of this place a century ago and sent great deal of forces here to set up a permanent base. Today this planet was fully Arm property, with hundreds of secondary bases, such as this, and a single huge city-like base located on the Northen pole of the planet, where the temperatures were less extreme and easier to bear.

The Core, busy in pushing Arm borders closer and closer to Empyrean, preferred to use their forces elsewhere. But now, as a result of a series of quick Core victories over the past decade, the front lines were a lot closer to Arafon-XQ7 now, and the Core apparently decided to spare enough commanders to conquer this place.

"OK, thanks for the situation update", said Maulder148 sarcastically, and strided right into the main HQ of the base. There, he saw his superior, the regional commander responsible for a chunk of the planet 1000 x 2000 km big. He was apparently busy discussing something with his aids and advisors, showing them something on a big screen. It looked like a map of the area in his control, though Maulder148 wasn't sure. He was transfered to this planet merely a month ago.

Maulder148 walked to the superior commander. The thought of interrupting the commander made him a little-bit nervous, but he HAD to know his job in all this mess.

After all, he was one of 50 commanders on the planet...

"Ah... sir? Maulder148 reporting in, sir! Did I miss anything?", he really hoped that Denton1, his superior, a human born in the natural old-fashioned way of male-female bonding, was in a good mood today...

Denton1 looked into the eyes of Maulder148, and Maulder148 recoiled.

His hopes were in vain.

"WHERE THE F*** YOU WERE 20 MINUTES AGO MAULDER!?! You hanged out with a chick, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU? YOU DID! I see right through you Maulder, you can't hide a f***in thing from me!", the words shot out of his mouth faster than an EMG (Energy Machine Gun), with a lot of spit.

"Errrr... well...", murmured Maulder148 but his commander did not intend to let him finish that sentence.

"COME OVER HERE RIGHT NOW, MAULDER!!! You see that map on the screen?", Denton1 poined on the map Maulder148 earlier saw. "This is the map of the region **I** have to somehow defend. THIS...", he pointed out an area painted in yellow, "THIS is the area I'm counting on YOU to defend! It's the western flank of my territory. If you fall, the enemy will have a straight route to this jungle here, and while we bugged it pretty good, we don't have spare troops to station there. A shame though. What a beautiful ambush it could've been...", a dreamy look spread on Denton1's face. Maulder148 started to wonder how sick and perverted his commander really is...

Denton1 snapped out of his dreamy state, and went on.

"The Core don't have the same problem we do. Their only limit is the resources availible to them, as they don't need to actually MAN their craft with living people that are too complex to nanolathe".

Maulder148 shuddered. Nanolathe living beings... people... what a horrible thought! And to think his commander would've done so without regret if he could!

Denton1 wasn't going to let him ignore his words. "MAULDER YOU PIECE OF SH**! ARE YOU LISTENING?", he screamed at him.

"Sir, yes sir!", shouted Maulder148.

"Very good. Now, where were I? Right, your strategy!", he gazed evilly at Maulder148. "Since we have already established thousands of plants and metal extractors on this planet, and since the Core would have a serious problem with resources at the beginning, I.... errrm.. SUGGEST, that you raid the resource buildings they establish, to cripple their ability to pump out units out of their factories. Yep, that should be your secondary objective, while your primary one is not to let any and all Core units to pass THIS line", he passed his finger vertically over a certain region, and a red line appeared. "If they do, well... I'll have even more job at hand.... Let's just F***in hope they won't decide to land commanders in this area at all, so we could just sit back and watch the show unfold elsewhere!", he exclaimed. "Well, that's all I gotta tell you. Move to that region and nanolathe a defensive perimeter right now. We'll let you know when the enemy arrive. And...", Denton1 whispered in a low and serious voice, "Good luck out there... DISSMISSED!", then he quickly turned to his advisors, continuing his mysterios preparations.

Maulder148 was deeply touched. He never thought that his commander could worry about someone's luck, let alone HIS luck! War always revealed the best and worst of all people, that much Maulder148 knew.

He went to the battlesuit hangar, shown his Commander badge to the lone Pewee guard at the entrance, passed his magnetic keycard through the keyhole and opened the door.

There he walked over to his personal Commander suit. He shouted to it: "Battlesuit Com-M-1-4-8! This is Maulder148, code number 2790030385-Yellow-Black-Black! Turn on main systems! Authorization password: 'Maulder is the best killer of Core scum in this galaxy!'".

The huge Commander suit just continued to stand there for a second, and suddenly responded with a deep robotic voice, that Maulder148 chose personally for his suit, just cause it sounded so cool. "Pilot code is correct. Authorization password is correct. Voice pattern match recordings. Welcome aboard, commander Maulder One Four Eight!". With these words the suit lowered it's hand. Maulder148 stepped onto it, and it immidiately went up, like a weird lift, raising Maulder148 to the hatch in the suit's head.

Maulder148 used his universal keycard again to open this hatch, entered the decorated cockpit, and closed the hatch behind him.

The red lighting in the cockpit was already turned on, the suit performing an automatic system check and finding everything is in top condition.

"Battlesuit Com-M-1-4-8 ready and awaiting!", reported the suit with it's emotionless metallic voice.

"Allright, let's roll!", Maulder148 ordered - "Inform HQ that wer'e leaving the hangar, tell'em to open the main doors, and tell the Pewee to stand clear".

Not 5 seconds passed, and the suit responded: "Already done!".

The hangar doors began to open slowly, the Pewee that was guarding the entrance was standing well clear out of the commander's path.

Maulder148 connected the proper wires into ports installed in different parts of his body. he gave an order to the suit: "Engage integration program!".

As the program activated, he started to actually FEEL the suit. He could move the suit at a slightest wave of his will, and could operate all it's systems, weapons and feel the resource flow availible to his Nanolathe system.

"Activation of integration program is now 100% complete! I'm all yours commander Maulder One Four Eight", the suit reported.

Maulder148 headed outside of the hangar.

As he stepped out of the hangar, he felt an incoming radio transmittion.

"Maulder! This is Denton. Look to your right!", and as he looked right he could see the small figure of Denton1 waving at him with one hand, and talking through a communicator in another. "You see this Atlas?", he pointed at a nearby machine, sitting idely on the sand. "It is all yours and ready to transport you to your destination, so we may begin to fortify the area as quickly as possible!".

Maulder148 acknowledged, feeling for a second an urge to smash the little insect talking to him down there on the ground. Of course he couldn't do it, and if he could he wouldn't. Killing machines, even machines with human minds, is one thing. But decimating flesh and bones was out of the question.

Maulder148 walked to the Atlas transport, as it lifted slightly of the ground, jets glowing brightly. It hovered above his head, then clamped 3 magnetic hooks onto the commander's hull, and lifted him off the ground.

The pilot was already briefed where to drop off the commander.

And on they flew, toward the setting sun.

West, to where Maulder148 will show everybody than he's not a bit worse than the original Brian Maulder!

...


	2. 2nd Chapter

CHAPTER 2

Somewhere, something has woken up.

"_COMMANDER MAULDER-0021-C IS ONLINE_", informed the commander to Central Consciousness, located somewhere below the metallic surface of Core Prime.

Core Prime... The homeworld of the huge Core Empire. A ball of metal, pollution and oil, hovering in the darkness of space, reflecting the light that it's sun, a white dwarf, casted upon it's titanium hills and silicon valleys.

Maulder-0021-C, located inside a ship in orbit of Core Prime, waited for Central Consciousness' next directions.

'_Proceed with mission_', came the response.

He did just that.

A thousand small ships carrying 30 Core commanders including Maulder rocketed toward a small star, thousands of light-years away. They entered Hyperspace, and were gone.

"_APPROXIMATE ETA IS 24 HOURS_", informed Commander XD21, the main commander of the whole operation.

Every other commander acknowledged the report with cold precision.

Maulder-0021-C was no exception. He was a rare kind of commander, his mind pattern was taken from a great Arm rather than Core commander.

Shortly before Arm forces conquered planet Eugenia, the planet Brian Maulder has failed to conquer without help, Core units located a few bone fragments of Maulder that miraculously survived the nuclear fire in which he went down, taking 40 excellent Core troops with him in a final gesture of hostility.

Using a few moderately damaged cells from the bone tissue samples, the Core were able to clone Brian Moulder, then pattern his mind into that of a commander again, but this time he will fight for the Core. This battle was going to be the first battle of Maulder-0021-C, the latest Core Maulder version.

In the oncoming assault on the desert planet, Maulder-0021-C was personally in charge of taking out a small secondary base that featured unusually big Arm cloning vats. These buildings were always a top priority for the Core to destroy, as it was the most obvious weakness of Arm.

They were still dependant on organic, mortal bodies, whether Core have moved long since past that stage.

Maulder-0021-C was lying in the hangar compartment, along with some support units, including two constructors and minor defense units. Quite enough to repel early raidings, trying to kill off the Core commander before he build strong enough defenses - a favourite Arm tactic.

Another favourite Arm tactic was to mimic Core military unit designs. For nearly every type of unit at Core's disposal, the Arm had a similar counterpart, often with slightly superior characteristics.

What the Arm DIDN'T have, is patience, logic, and firepower. Core, on the other hand, had all three of these in abundance.

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Moulder148 was slightly irritated, as the request to route more metal to his Nano-systems was denied.

"But why? All metal deposits were taken by metal extractors for YEARS now, so building my own extractors is not an option! How can I generate enough metal to build a freaking army when you gave me only THREE extractors???", he flared at Denton.

"I'm sorry, mister nano-stall", Denton1 mocked in return, "But it's not my call. I'm not commanding the resources of the WHOLE planet, you know".

"But there are at LEAST 20 more extractors in my vicinity god dammit! It's YOUR area of jurisdiction! Why can't you route more metal to my dried-out systems? I can't depend entirely on scarce metal-rich desert rocks for constructing fortifications, you know!".

It was simply _ridiculous_!!!

"Sorry kid, those are top commander Buckman's orders, he told me to use most of extractors availible to me to build-up defenses right here, in the base. And don't even THINK of questioning his orders! If you think I'm scary, you REALLY don't want to meet him! Now get outta my viewscreen! I got other bussiness to attend to!". He flipped a switch, and Moulder148 watched his ugly face dissapear.

Moulder sighed.

He had 20 hours left to build some serious army here. Where the heck was he going to take all the needed metal from!?!

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"_ATTENTION ALL CORE MILITARY UNITS. ARM INTERCEPTORS DETECTED EN ROUTE TO OUR SQUADRON. WE CANNOT AVOID CONFRONTATION. THIS UNEXPECTED ENGAGEMENT MAY DELAY OUR ARRIVAL TO THE TARGET PLANET, KNOWN BY IT'S ARM NAME, ARAFON-XQ7. PREPARE YOUR UNSHIELDED SYSTEMS FOR SHARP MANEUVERING_", boomed the voice of Commander XD21, the general of this operation.

Maulder-0021-C aknowledged the order, and readied his metallic body for high-G turns and twists. He could see through the commander's top priority information comm-link that their squadron's escorts have already dropped out of formation and headed toward the Arm vessels. The rest of the squadron continued on it's way like nothing happened.

A few minutes later, he could detect small dots of bright light far away, as their escorts engaged the Arm Freedom Fighters, modified to alow space flight and outfitted with hyperdrive.

They were no match in any way for the Core escorts, genuine Iron Angel space superiority fighters, built for the purpose of space-fighting from start.

But there were many Arm fighters out there, and shortly all four Angels were burning, their silicon brains exposed to the deadly void of hyperspace, that was so much like normal space in many ways.

The Arm small fighters swarmed toward the bulk of Core ships, launching missiles as they approached.

Core defensive laser turrets kicked in, destroying some of the missiles en route, while dodging others in enormous maneuvers of hundreds of G's acceleration. If the Core ship's occupants were organic beings, they woud've been smashed into tiny bits of goo a long time ago.

But they were pure machines, very durable, capable of surviving in nearly any enviromental conditions.

Unfortunately (for the Core), the Arm Alliance somehow developed devices that counter the deadly effects of inertia on soft organic matter, and the Arm fighters were now following the Core bulkier vessels in their maneuvers, spitting out antimatter missiles and laser blasts as they went.

One of the smaller Core ships, fortunately one that not contained a commander at all, was hit by a pair of missiles, the Heavy Armor generators failed, and the ship exploded brightly, illuminating the other, desparately weaving ships.

But Arm fighters suffered more casualties, as the heavy laser batteries stroke down their fighters one by one, reducing their numbers to a fraction of what they originally were.

Eventually, the remaining Arm forces disengaged, leaving a few damaged Core transports behind without finishing the job they started. The ships will be repaired in no time, as molecular nano-bots will slip in between the cracks in the ship's hull and systems, creating new layers of metal, plastic, silicon, and delicate electronics.

The Core forces continued their advance, confident in their ability to overwhelm any threat.

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The burning desert was completely devoid of anything but sand. Sand was all that was visible in every direction, except for a medium-sized reddish rock, lying near the foundation of a sand dune.

Suddenly, from behind that same dune, a huge humanoid shape appeared. It pointed a barrel mounted on its left arm towards the rock, and a green beam shot out of the gun like a spear, earning the device the name "nano-lance" on some Arm planets.

The beam stroke home, disintegrating the rock into its component materials, filtering out any non-useful waste.

Maulder148 sighed.

'Here goes the last rock in the proximity', he thought. Well, it was the only remaining rock the air patrols he sent earlier have detected. Perhaps there were more, lying around somewhere, though he doubted it.

'Well, Maulder, time for your plan!', he thought to himself, heading back for the small base he managed to construct until now.

He arrived after 2 minutes, and started constructing Solar Plants.

A very vast array of solar plants.

He proceeded to build fusion plants, since even that much solar plants, which were twice as effective under such a burning sun, weren't enough. After 3 hours he had a very serious electricity network, though it should've taken him a third of this time, if he had enough metal at his disposal.

'Now, for phase 2!', he thought.

He started to construct infinite number of Metal Makers, which could generate a steady flow of metal, but with huge energy consumption. The efficiensy of these devices, who were usually used only in emergency situations such as this, was less than perfect indeed...

When he felt that the metal flow increased to a sufficient level to start building some serious guns, satisfaction coursed through his veins.

'For starters, let's build a Vehicle Plant', he thought.

He proceeded to work on his base, and with that much metal flowing in, it was a pleasure!

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"_ATTENTION ALL CORE MILITARY UNITS!",_ sounded the voice of XD21 in every commander's head. "_WE ARE NOW WITHIN 20 MINUTES OF THE TARGET PLANET. REVIEW YOUR OBJECTIVES AND YOUR PLANNED STRATEGY. YOU ARE THE BEST OF CORE FORCES. CENTRAL CONSCIOUSNESS IS COUNTING ON YOU TO BRING PEACE TO THE GALAXY. IT IS YOUR DUTY TO ELIMINATE THE THREAT KNOWN AS THE ARM ALLIANCE, AND TO SECURE CENTRAL CONSCIOUSNESS' ETERNAL EXISTENCE. XD21 WISH YOU ALL GOOD LUCK. XD21 OUT_".

If an Arm commander could hear these words, he would've been surprised by XD21's show of individuality and friendship when he wished good luck to his squadmates. But there was nothing surprising about it at all.

While Arm citizens and soldiers usually considered Core as thinking machines, and Central Consciousness as an advanced AI, it was far from the truth.

These were people, just like the Arm, only they were imprisoned in metallic, rather than flesh, bodies. Sure, they were a little devoid of emotions - after all, they did not have any hormones to cloud their judgment - but they were human nevertheless.

And just like Arm, they only fought for survival...

Maulder-0021-C's dropship rocketed through the upper atmosphere, toward its calculated target.

With a shrieking sound of protesting metal, the dropship slammed into the lower, denser layers of the planet's nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere.

So far, everything went as Maulder-0021-C planned...

The dropship was by now concealed entirely by a fireball, trailing thick black smoke. The temperature inside the dropship almost reached boiling point, but Maulder-0021-C didn't care, nor did it matter for any other Core unit in the dropship.

A few minutes later, the commander was already on ground, and nanolathing as fast as he could, while his support units patrolled the immediate area around his base. Maulder-0021-C started with a few Solar Plants, which appeared to be very effective under the hot desert son, though Core have already conquered hotter planets than this. He sent a Weasel scout vehicle to find any metal deposits. And sure enough, it did.

But they were already taken.

Maulder-0021-C could've personally come over and capture the enemy extractors with ease, but he was not going to waste valuable time capturing buildings that could be easily destroyed while he could use his time for strengthening his army.

"_DESTROY ENEMY EXTRACTOR UNIT_", he gave the order. Although the Weasel was merely a scouting vehicle and was very lightly armed, the paper-thin titanium covering of the enemy extractor's exposed infrastructure was no match for the beam of light, concentrated into a tiny dot, that burned through it in a few quick pulses, destroying it with a small explosion...

---

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A few dozen kilometers from there, Maulder148 sensed the destruction of a metal extractor.

One of his own, 3 extractors!

He wasn't surprised of course. Denton1 checked in with Maulder148 a few minutes ago, and informed of the Core's arrival. They came a bit later than Arm Intelligence predicted, but they still came in big numbers. Denton told him the anticipated landing spot of the commander that he, Maulder148, will have to face, then proceeded to direct other operations against the Core.

But now Maulder148 knew the location of the enemy commander even more accurately, as a result of the destruction of his extractor...

He wanted to deal with the annoyance as quickly as possible, and then perhaps proceed to reinforce other areas on the planet.

He ordered his squadron of Brawler gunships to take off, and head south-west in search of the enemy commander...

...


End file.
